Word.ws English Dictionary

hanky-twist

hanky-twist verb: to fret; to worry ineffectually.

Verb

hanky-twist (third-person singular simple present hanky-twists, present participle hanky-twisting, simple past and past participle hanky-twisted)

  1. To fret; to worry ineffectually.
    • There must in other fields be analogous forms of the brow-knitting and hanky-twisting which have accompanied the more narcissistic aspects of the 'literary turn' in anthropology (of which Writing Culture is least typical) and cognate fields.1993, Stephen L. Nugent, Amazonian Caboclo Society: An Essay on Invisibility and Peasant Economy
    • After years of hanky-twisting, here we are, irreversibly committed to this thing.2011, Jack Walker, The Extraordinary Rendition of Vincent Dellamaria: A Political Fiction, →ISBN

Forms of hanky-twist

third-person singular presenthanky-twists
present participlehanky-twisting
past participlehanky-twisted
pasthanky-twisted

Origin of hanky-twist

From the image of an anxious person twisting a handkerchief in the hands.

Questions about hanky-twist

What does hanky-twist mean?
Hanky-twist means to fret; to worry ineffectually.
What part of speech is hanky-twist?
Hanky-twist is a verb.
What is the past tense of hanky-twist?
The past tense of hanky-twist is hanky-twisted.

Words near hanky-twist in the dictionary

  1. hanky-panked
  2. hanky-pankies
  3. hanky-panking
  4. hanky-panks
  5. hanky-panky
  6. hanky-twist
  7. hanky-twisted
  8. hanky-twisting
  9. hanky-twists
  10. Hanley
  11. Hanley Castle

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: hanky-twist (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

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Cite this entry: “hanky-twist.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/hanky-twist. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.